The plan, as it was for the day was to drive over to (and circumnavigate) Lake Okeechobee. Staying in a RV campground like this, however, isn't conducive to motivation.
Family friends were also staying in the same campground, so we sat around and chatting with them until just after lunch.
This part of Florida is what I really wanted to see, the rural "inside" of the state, where the tourists are scarce and the landscape surreal. We headed towards Clewiston, Florida on the south west corner of the lake. After passing through Clewiston, we found ourselves on the lake...except we weren't. A 20-30 foot high dyke had been constructed around the entire lake. Constructed in the late 1920's - early 1930's, The Herbert Hoover Dyke is an expansive Army Corp of Engineers project to control the lake from natural events and keep the land from flooding. It also had the unhappy consequence of making the lake almost completely inaccessible and unviewable.
Even though we couldn't see the lake, we stumbled across something I would have never thought from South Florida: Sugar Cane.
Apparently 70,000 acres of land in Palm Beach and Hendry Counties produce over 350,000 tons of raw sugar annually. We sat along side a road and watched the sugar cane being harvested with great interest. Partially because it was fascinating, and partially because there was little else to see.
Pahokee, Florida is situated on the eastern shore of the lake, and is a picturesque (if run-down) little town.
A city park also afforded us our first view of the lake itself. This marina was apparently little used, but in decent shape and gave us the opportunity to walk out and get a better view of the lake itself.
It is a tremendously huge lake, so big you can't even see the opposite shore.
Someone needs a haircut.
There as also a nice campground along the lake side of the dyke, and you could actually drive along top of it for a little bit, which was interesting.
There are several canals that stretch out like spokes of a wheel from the lake. This was a lock/dam combination that headed off towards the Atlantic ocean. I imagine that this system of locks was envisioned to help transport carbo between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico without having to go all the way around the Keys, but in terms of modern shipping it would be inadequate to handle ships of any significant size..
It is a pleasant lake to look at, but it was also curiously absent of any pleasure craft.
By this time, we had been driving around the lake for several hours. We were hungry and tired, so a quick late lunch at Applebees in the town of Okeechobee, gas and a ice-cream treat were all that we wanted and needed. That and a nap.
Driving back to Labelle was more flatlands, dyke and cows! Apparently Okeechobee (the town) is a large cow town in Florida. Again, when you think of south Florida, people don't necessarily think of cows. It was rather odd to see cattle grazing among palm trees.
By this the time we made it back to the campground, we were all worn out and ready to do nothing but relax. Which is what we did, with another early night.
